Black Mesa is a third-party remake of Half-Life developed and published by Crowbar Collective With the release of Half-Life 2 in , Valve Corporation re-released several of its previous titles, ported to their . In Surface Tension Uncut, an unofficial mod for Black Mesa, the Surface Tension chapter was expanded to. Cinematic Mod, is just a highly enhanced original game, but people her talking about a remaking HL2 almost from scratch, just like Black Mesa. Black Mesa (the retail version) is a standalone game though. So not even the mod is a Half-Life 2 mod, as you can download the Source SDK.